If you have moved from an alternative charity/fundraising CRM system to tengoCloud, you may be used to different terminology. Tengo Software’s suite of charity software covers all areas of a charity’s operation, and thus it makes sense to use more generic terms for things. See examples below:
Constituents: Most people coming on-board from another charity CRM refer to their constituents as donors, or supporters. In our system, a person, organisation, or charity, have a single master record. They could be a donor, a volunteer, a member, or all of the above – constituents is a word that covers all bases, and you will find anyone or any organisation in the constituent listing.
Funds & Appeals: You may have known appeals and funds in other systems as Analysis and Sub Analysis or Campaigns or a whole host of other things. In tengoCloud appeals are your main reasons for fundraising and funds are how the donations can be broken down, for example a school may have an appeal of New Science Lab and then have a fund called ‘Building Fund’ and a fund called ‘Equipment Fund’. The money being raised in this scenario is going towards the science lab but donations are broken down into different pots. It is possible that all of your donations all go together in which case would just have a general appeal and a general fund. Please see our guide about configuring funds and appeals to find out more
Attribute Groups: This is where you can collate the information you wish to store about your constituents such as emergency contact information about volunteers, their envelope number, or their GDPR preferences, basically this is where you can add any information your organisation needs to store about your constituents. We have guides about managing attributes and attribute groups and adding attribute information on a constituent record to help you make the most of this feature.